The Curious Journey of Mr. Eric Delko or Red Star Galactica

BY NOON NEXT day they had crossed the headwaters of the Makrita only fifteen or so versts from its source. Here the stream was shallow enough to ford without a soaking, though the waters were still sufficiently enraged to stop ice from crusting them over. The bitter wind of yesterday had slackened to a chilly breeze.

As they toiled up the slope of Khladni Ridge six versts beyond the Makrita, hacking a path through the snow-thatched tangle of tree bones, it became clear that the upper heights of the felled larches had not just been stripped bare, they had been scorched in the bargain.

Not even a cosmetic snow covering could hide this fact. The fist of wind that had felled these giants had been intensely hot. It might well have come from a limb of the sun itself. Many of the trees looked as if their tops had been thrust into a white-hot furnace.

Yet strangely, in the aftermath of this incandescent blow, no forest fire had raged across the wretched taiga: otherwise, all the fallen timber would have been reduced to ash. Maybe the very air had been torn away from the ruined forest, suffocating the flames even as they were lit.

A few times they stopped to sweep snow free from the corpses of these trees so that Lydia could photograph the charring of the wood. Tsiolkovsky would fumble with a pencil in his glove, scribbling hasty calculations of units of heat and energy.

At the top of Khladni Ridge the party halted, in awe at the view from this high point.

They could see tens of versts northward over the hilly terrain, as far as the snow-shrouded hills along the distant Kushmo River. And all across this huge expanse everything had been burned and blasted to the ground. Eastwards, far away in the lee of some rough hills, a few patches of forest still survived intact where they had been sheltered from the shockwave. In the ultimate distance right on the eastern horizon they could make out where the living taiga resumed its march across the land.

With theodolite and binoculars, Matousek and Mishin took the measure of this half-acre of hell, while Lydia used up two whole rolls of her American-made film.

Presently Rudolph Abramovich fell to his knees in the snow as if to pray. He was overwhelmed. ' Oh God," he wailed. "We're such insignificant creatures! What can a human being ever hope to achieve, in view of this!"

"Control yourself!" growled Mishin. "Dammit, you ought to be feeling vindicated. Here it is, and it's all true."

Basha regarded the stooped man with glee. "Place cursed. Now you cursed."

"Shut your bloody pie hole!" shouted the Baron.

Matousek glanced round from his theodolite. "Do you realize we aren't even in the center yet?" He pointed. "See how all the trees are still lying pretty well parallel, pointing back the way we came? The meteorite must have struck the ground at least another twenty versts north of here. That's why we can't see any crater. When we do, it'll be enormous! The Arizona one will have nothing on it! Frankly, I'm surprised the ground isn't riven into fissures and strewn with fallen boulders even this far away."

Tsiolkovsky banged his hands together to restore his life-blood to the. "That's because the spaceship exploded in the sky." He gestured upwards. "It must have become a little sun for a few seconds. Imagine the power locked in it! Actually, there's no need to imagine---it can be calculated."

"Power?" Yanovich parroted the word. "We're powerless and no denying it."

Tsiolkovsky moved over to comfort him. "Rudolph Abramovich, we too will learn to unlock the sun's mighty power someday!"

Mishin, the professional soldier, eyed the scientist thoughtfully. "Is that wise? Just look over there: suppose this was Moscow, and your ship had been exploded over it by design as a weapon. Why, there wouldn't be a building left standing. And as for people: noble and peasant, merchant and priest alike---all dead in a flash. I tell you, as a military man the very prospect frightens me. Where is the point of valor or discipline in such circumstances? It would mean the end of war as a heroic activity. Your kind of people would be ruling the roost, not officers and nobles."

"Nobles, indeed!" Eric spoke bitterly. "Sometimes nobility runs quite thin when every nobleman makes twelve other noblemen."

"This is no place for us to fight a battle, Eric Saveli. This is the aftermath of a battle waged between Present and Future. If Tsiolkovsky has his way, we'll all be the losers."

"Sorry, I wasn't trying to be offensive. In many respects I agree with you. I mean, it would be pointless for a chap to do anything for his country---if a Napoleon of the future can simply send one ship to explode over Moscow and destroy all of it in five seconds."

Yanovich struggled to his feet. "A world without meaning---as if the world isn't absurd enough already!"

"That's because some of the fellows in it are!" snapped Mishin. "Explain something to me something, Eric Saveli: If the world does become as absurd as this, how will you artist chappies go about ennobling the human race?"

It appeared to be a serious question, so Eric tried to answer it. "Maybe artists would invent other worlds where such things didn't happen. Maybe they'd even try to live entirely in those worlds, in their minds. I don't know, really....Maybe they'd invent worlds which were even worse and more absurd, making the true world, the one we live in, seem sane by contrast?"

Tsiolkovsky butted in. "Obviously the artists of the future will imagine other worlds! Worlds out in space beyond the prison of the planet Earth! But you needn’t worry about scientists destroying the world; they’ll only use such power to liberate us."

Eric nodded. "Science is our best hope."

"True," said Mishin. "It’s just that I look at all this and wonder…."

"Well, let’s get on with some science!" said Matoušek testily. "Looking at those clouds, I'd say we're in for another spot of bad weather."

Basha began to rumble. "Me coward. Grandad could climb the sky. Now all locked flat. Giants are dwarfs. You think it needs brave man to come here? Needs creature. Creature on string."

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Matoušek was perfectly right about another turn in the weather. They encamped below Khladni Ridge that evening in a bitter blizzard, and the whole party crammed into a single tent. To leave the wretched houses exposed out in the open seemed the height of cruelty and insanity---the wind flayed you alive, the moment you set foot outside.

"Is anyone alive in the whole world?" asked Lydia as they lay jumbled together in the darkness after eating, still too cold to sleep.

"It does get to you, doesn’t it?" murmured Mishin softly. "You must be brave. You must believe in yourself. Otherwise, you die."418Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡV7Xa7BlBHJ
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"Your photos will amaze people," Tsiolkovsky assured her. "They’ll set the world on fire. Likewise, my calculations. This place will become a virtual Mecca of science."

"A Mecca, you think" Eric sighed. "I have always believed that Sakhalin should be a Russian Mecca, where people made pilgrimages for the good of their souls."

Yanovich began to whine. "This place will be our grave."

"No, it will not!" thundered Mishin. "You’ll get back you wretch, if I have to drag you personally."

But the wind continued to howl its wolflike cry for their deaths, outside. It howled with callous, depraved indifference. 418Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ75Bu9xkXv3
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They weren’t able to move during the whole of the next day. Even brief forays outside the tent to perform bodily functions or to try to tend to the horses, proved agonizing. Idiotically, they spent much of their time playing lotto for ten kopek stakes.

"Eighty-one!" they called out; and "Trente-quatre!" and "Twenty-two!" Lotto wasn’t really such a bad game, once you got used to it. Or maybe their brains had just frozen up?418Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡTTk77Pci4v
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The following day was worse still: a mountain of boredom and immobility and petty squabbling. They had consumed the last of the vodka, and food stocks were beginning to look very skimpy, given the slim hope of shooting any game en route. Sometime during the next night one of the horses died in the cold. When they roused themselves to the new day, they found the beast lying frozen stiff under a fresh snowfall.

However, the weather had calmed again: only a few flurries were blowing down from the gray clouds which hung low everywhere. They agreed that it would be madness to climb Khladni Ridge again and strike off northwards in an attempt to reach the center of the explosion. Another forty versts added to the round trip could well prove suicidal.

They loaded up the two surviving horses, one of which seemed to be on its last legs, in any case, and they started the long trek southwards. Only Matoušek really regretted the decision, since he still had to see his great crater: while Tsiolkovsky pointed out fastidiously, citing factors x, y and z, that there couldn’t possibly be one.418Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ5o3NPIK9c7
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Their return of Basha to the bosom of the Tungusi provided a little respite on the vilest journey ever. Thereafter, it only got worse.

Before they were to struggle into Kezhma thirteen days later, they would have shot first one horse, then the second. The first, because the nag couldn’t go any further---and with it, went one sledge. The second, simply for the sake of food; they had exhausted the small stock of frozen horsemeat from the first. With the second loss, they were forced to abandon the other sledge as well, along with most of their equipment, retaining only one tent, guns, notebooks and Lydia’s camera. And a hunk of horse.

When they did arrive at Kezhma, the Angara River was by now a mass of swiftly moving icefloes. But because the water hadn’t yet looked solid, they bought a raft. On this they proceeded downstream, in constant danger of overturning.

Three days later they arrived at the trading station of Strelka, near where the Angara flowed out into the Yenisei; and here they rested for a while in exhaustion. +

Within a week, the Yenisei had frozen thickly through enough to support sleighs, so they bought two sleighs and more horses. With a bitter wind at their backs, which presently became an Arctic blizzard, they returned to Krasnoyarsk at last down the snowy river, worn out and sick.

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